‘Oh fuck, what’s the use’

I think my work lacks some commonplace universality

I know part of what I’ve been going through is feeling ‘oh fuck, what’s the use’. You know, John, it’s been a very long life of forging ahead with gusto, filled with hope of getting what said I’ve got to say and exhibit, then despair at the struggle. I’m not being a good trooper at the moment, but it is the core of the essential me and will return.

I have at least, thank God for it, seen that my work is meaningful to the world. I have managed to produce some life altering experience for my fellow man, to move people by what I do, to add to the experience of life on earth for more than me. I’ve witnessed that, and will keep at it. I expect the size of the audience I reach will expand when I’m dead, some misty time in the future. But I sure as bloody hell would like to see it, and profit from it, before I meet my hereafter.

There will always be an abundance of bad stuff being lauded by the roving eye within the bodies wherein critical critique and museum ownerships and benedictions are stored. It’s as much the way of the world as a lucky break or overnight success. I think my work lacks some commonplace universality. At least it has not been benighted by those whose approval makes it acceptable for an embrace by uncertain multitudes. All intelligent judgment has gone that’s based on personal certainty. People are afraid to like things that have not been pointed out to them first as something that’s okay to like.

So, knowing all of that too full well, I have, in my lifetime, plowed ahead determined not to notice or care. And buoyed, as we all are, by the stories of the unsung years of the now adored and famous, either present among us or in the mists of time passed.

I will see if I can start selling my work here, which I remain hopeful may happen, as it did in Big Sur. I don’t want to try and find a gallery there again, it’s a miserable place to run a business and that was a golden two years’ experience that gave me much. Whatever the new is, I’m in it now and need to push the parameters. I hope this makes some sense.